First order of beeswax: does everyone have access to a copy of Ta-Nehisi Coates' "The Beautiful Struggle"? Let me know.
Second: you are welcome to post anything you want here, book-related or not. Send me your items, post to the comments section or let me if you want the site password if that's easier for you.
Third thing: anyone may join in the fracas. This is a place where we can stay in touch with our friends' ideas. A non-Zuckerbergian approach to the online conversation.
Lastly: we can dissolve this page at anytime. Let's try it out for the duration of Coates' book. Speaking of, your thoughts so far?
6 comments:
Nice spot! kudos for leading the troops.
I got my copy from the NY public library and I'm about half way thru. I love his voice and way with words.
more thoughts to come...
I have a library copy and have just started. Love it so far, although understanding the slang has been a "beautiful struggle". I will most likely go back and re-read the beginning after I get more into the lingo.
Thanks, Priya, for coordinating & for including me!
I got a copy on my Nook and would say I'm about halfway through it. I definitely feel like I am experiencing his upbringing alongside him. I do hope for some actual narrative from his father as opposed to just descriptions from his son.
Hey all, I just received The Beautiful Struggle a week ago and have been reading it slowly as I wrap up Gary Shteyngart's celebrated "Super Sad True Love Story." While I enjoy Shteyngart's book in all its feats-of-Brooklyn literary-style-technical-wordsmithing glory, his characters seem shallow to me, and the prose unnecessarily precious at times. In contrast, Coates has a subtle mastery of the language and a musical deployment of it. I love his way of conveying concepts so deep, so personal and yet historically significant with the simplest of phrases. For example, his reflection on black family structure in Baltimore at the time, "Fathers were ghosts."
I found the last 40 pages extremely masterful and poignant...Coates not only can move a story along but can construct a mean sentence.
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